History of Bfriend

BFRIEND commenced in 1995, the International Year of the Family, as a new initiative funded by UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide (formerly Adelaide Central Mission). It may come as a surprise that a Uniting Church organisation initiated a project such as this. What happened was:

A lesbian who was working in UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide's Family and Relationship Counselling team had noticed the gap that faced newly identifying men and women between coming to terms with their same sex attraction and finding friends in the community. She tells the story of 'Louise', a young woman she was counselling and her isolation. She tells it this way.

'It was 'Louise's' isolation and her need for contact with the 'lesbian community' outside the gaze of her family and culture, which made me determined to revive an idea for which I had been trying to secure funding over the years. I wanted to set up a 'buddy' system whereby volunteers from the gay and lesbian community would provide peer support for people newly identifying as gay or lesbian. It needed funds to co-ordinate, and the only organisations which were willing to support the idea had no money. However it was 1994 which made it the International Year of the Family! Invitations from my work-place management went out to workers to submit proposals for suitable family projects. I spoke to a friend and co-worker about the buddy idea saying to her 'I know they'll never fund this, and it will be a mad push to get up yet another submission that will go nowhere, but I want to stick it in their faces the 'we' have families too!'' - an ever so grown up motive! Coupled with hidden hope that something would come of it for 'Louise' and the many other women and men like her.

'We had the usual time of less than a week to get the submission together and then -we waited- for the ripples to tidal wave down from the executive 3rd floor to the counselling services on the first...and to my shock the waves never came. We never even got wet, although I suspect our manager did as she went into the swim for us. Bfriend is now up and running, even though 'Louise' decided that, by the time it was operational as a scheme, she didn't really need to be involved.

'Miracles do happen, mostly outside of the therapy room, and 'Louise's' came in the form of her 20 year old cousin, 'David'. They had been close years earlier and she was desperate to break free of the suffocation and the secrecy. When she told him about her sexuality, he was very quiet and reserved, which understandably she took for rejection. However, he was gathering the strength to tell her he was gay!'
(Windows, Leela Anderson: Bedtime Stories for Tired Therapists, Dulwich Centre Publications 1995)

As a result of the success of the programme in it's first year ACM made a decision to extend funding until the end of June 1998 and to seek other sources of funding to continue the program beyond that time. That endeavour was successful and as of this year we are now a permanent programme in the Family Services of ACM funded by the South Australian Department of Human Services.